Unheard
by Luna Tiger
Summary: Ianto Jones is missing five years of his life. And then people start talking to him out of the blue. Life is weird. // Implied past!Jack/Ianto; formatting fixed.


**Title**: Unheard  
**Fandom**: Torchwood  
- _Characters_: Ianto Jones, his 'ghosts' (implied!past Jack/Ianto)  
**Rating**: PG  
**Summary**: The easiest escape is really the hardest. You just don't remember why.

- b – e – g – i – n -

_What's the last thing you remember? _

_Going to some conference-convention in London. I...don't even remember what it was about._

_What year was that?_

_2003. October._

_And nothing in the house looked familiar?_

_I didn't take that close of a look. I just know I didn't recognize it when I woke up._

_Ownership says you've been there since late-2006. Paid all your bills on time too._

_Do I have a job?_

_Can't find a record of anything current, but we'll help you a little there. Odd though._

_What is, sir?_

_We've been getting a dramatic increase in memory failure recently. Some lost a few days, a couple blokes lost a couple months. This is, by far, the worst case we've gotten in the last decade and a half. And I'm sorry, mate, it's a shitty lot to be given. We'll try to float you along, yeah?_

_Yes, sir. Thank you._

- t - i - m - e -

Ianto closed the door behind him with a secure tug, settled by the sound of the latch catching like a security blanket soothed a child. It'd been a month since he woke up in 'his' home, lying on a couch he'd never seen before in his life, and in a suit that seemed far too above his standards for him to be wearing. No pictures on the walls, no personal letters, the bed sharply made, more suits than casual clothing in the closet and drawers, and an overall sense that the place was barely lived in past the necessities. And he owned it.

His mobile had been wiped, something less coincidental and mostly suspicious. Hadn't recognized it either, never mind it was five years ahead of its time, and the plan had been disconnected too. Left himself wondering what he could have possibly been doing that required a clean sweep and good suits in _Cardiff_ of all places. He would have been less bothered if it had been London.

With a deep intake of the morning spring chill, Ianto stepped off his stoop with the same repressed anxiety he felt every time he left for work. A bitter taste of fear that the house was the only safe place in the world--he could finally call it his without feeling weird anymore--and every time he left it exposed himself to whatever had knocked his past right out of his head. He dreamed of monsters in the dark that did it, men of the underground, anything. Once he even entertained aliens did him in. But that was silly.

Aliens? In Cardiff? Only if they were the illegal sort.

Ianto feared recognition as much as he craved it, just one person who could tell him something of himself in the last five years. No one ever stepped forward, no one rang. Had he been miserable and friendless? What sort of life took so much time to not have a drinking buddy?

But whatever that life was, it wasn't his anymore. The suits were pushed aside for normality, ordinary clothing. He packed his cupboards just a little fuller, but not too much. He'd never been a big eater, but Ianto wondered if he purposefully starved himself or something. The figures in his bank account said he shouldn't be hungry (which were another mystery; it was a lot of savings), so the lack of food had either been intentional, or he'd really been putting off the shopping.

Simple life. Regular life. Dull and boring life. Mundane. Ianto resolved to keep it so. Which meant getting himself to the market in time for his shift. Funny he didn't own a car. Nice place and no car. Either he walked a whole lot or traveled by taxi. Both felt right, honestly. _What the hell did I do?_

He hadn't even hit the front of the neighbor's property when he saw the first piece of life that morning, heading his way from around the corner. With a carry bag on her shoulder and her pumps booking it over the cement, she was no less a well-dressed woman in a hurry. _What's there to hurry for around here? Especially so early._

She got closer, walking in his opposite direction, and he noticed she was looking at him. Intently. Ianto inwardly flinched, wondering if this was the encounter he only partially wanted--

"Pardon me," she called, slightly breathless, "you wouldn't happen to have the time, would you?"

Ianto exhaled in subtle relief and glanced at his watch. "It's half after six, miss." Her smile of gratitude was infectious, bright, and earnest. Maybe she was an out of towner. It sounded like it, vernacularly. With the quick, awkward thank you, she was off again, adjusting her shoulder strap in mid-step. Ianto took one look at her go, and went on his way.

- t - i - m - e -

"Excuse me."

A couple of days later, Ianto found himself eye-to-eye with another woman, fidgeting uncomfortably, even as she tried to appear casual. The Centre was crowded, and she wasn't dressed like she was selling products, so what would a person single out another for at random-- "Yes?"

She grimaced. "I'm sorry to be a bother, but you looked relatively intelligent and me and my friend can't seem to figure it out because I'm pretty sure they're like earwigs and eat your brain and he thinks it's a monster--" A babbler. "--but you wouldn't happen to know what a weevil is, by chance?"

He blinked, perplexed. _That's all?_ "It's a beetle, miss. Tiny one. They're quite harmless, unless you're a farmer."

She stared, like she couldn't believe that answer, stunned frozen. But then she laughed, abashed, and shook her head. Maybe she wasn't a brunette in spirit? "Oh really, a small beetle. Thank you kindly."

The woman melted into the crowd, and Ianto shrugged the odd encounter off; life was random. It didn't mean anything. Just one-- or two-- people learning their 'new thing' for the day. It wasn't important; the candles he came to buy were.

- t - i - m - e -

"Hey mate."

It was only a week since he'd gone to the Centre. Mary from register seven turned thirty-six the other day, and Ianto felt like an intruder, being invited along for drinks even though he barely knew her. But she liked the candles, so maybe she felt it was only fair. Or pitied him, the amnesiac. A lack of contacts, however, certainly made him pliant to the idea of joining the festivities. The promise of a morning hangover might be worth it if he came out feeling less lonely with his life.

Maybe he had a sign on his back or something, but the hunched man who approached him didn't look like he was mistaken in his...whatever it was. Ianto froze in mid-step, the four drinks in hand a precautionary shield between the two. The man wasn't familiar at all. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, um, I'm looking for this girl, Lisa. Said to find a bloke named Eugene Jones over the mobile, and you look like what she told me."

Inwardly, he rolled his eyes. _Maybe I was a drug dealer and tested the wrong sample. Christ._ "Sorry, I'm not Eugene, and I don't know any Lisa either."

The man hesitated before imploring on. "Sure? No Lisa Hallett?"

"No."

"Alright," he said resignedly. "Thanks mate."

How did questions like that work? The man pretty much abruptly left the bar, as though that had been his one and only mission. Some of his tablemates saw the scene, naturally. Of course they asked questions. "What was that all about, Yan?"

He didn't have the faintest. "Don't know."

"Did you know him?"

Ianto shook his head. "Never seen him before now."

"Or you think you haven't," piped up Mary herself. "Betcha have before your accident."

_Except that seems wrong, Mar'._ Ianto frowned in disapproval. "If I did, I wouldn't want to see him ever again past tonight. He looked ratty."

- t - i - m - e -

Drinking in company was fun, but men sometimes needed to drink alone too. Ianto found himself at another bar a couple weeks later, tucked in a corner and a nose in his second stout. Almost two months since he woke up in a new era. _It's like an anniversary. I survived this long without cracking._ And since Mary's night out, no more strange people with their odd questions. Nothing about weevils or 'Lisa'. Nope, it'd simply been, "Where's this?", "How much is that?", and the occasional, "How you doin'?"

It felt like a private victory. It deserved a private celebration.

"This seat taken?"

And just like that, it wasn't private any longer. Ianto looked next to him in time to already find a clear, full glass hitting the countertop and a man sitting on the stool beside him, with the most eye-catching smile you could find anywhere. Aimed right at him. He must've been a comic sight himself, because that smile _widened_ when it seemed almost impossibly wide before. Ianto panicked for a fraction. The man oozed charisma in three words and a smile, but that didn't mean the man wasn't trouble. On the contrary, it made him trouble right off the bat.

"Ah, you're going to spill that," stated the man, pointing to someplace below his vision. Ianto followed, but quite grasping the concept, and just as soon realized he'd been in the process of _drinking_ went the man took his seat, and the glass was still somewhere near his lips. In a form that could only be considered disgracefully saving face, he all but slammed it back down on the bar after recoiling, grabbing a napkin to wipe his mouth to catch what had dribbled. _How embarrassing, especially in from of a--_ He paused, and looked at the man again. Mostly at the smile that was still there, now coated with stark amusement. But that wasn't as telling as what had just come out of it.

"You're American." Smooth. _Ianto Jones, master of the obvious._ He mentally kicked himself, then blamed it on the stranger's startling entrance.

The man chuckled heartily and quipped, "You people and your labels," before taking a sip of whatever was in the glass.

"Sorry?"

"Private joke. Don't think too much of it." And to reinforce the idea, the man cast him another heart-winning smile, like it was all the power he needed to change the subject. It started to feel potent enough. "Have a name there?"

Ianto paused. This was the sort of scenario one heard about all the time, wives' tales, the clubbing edition. They all ended differently, and this wasn't a club, and obviously this man had no manners, so Ianto humored him. "Ifan." With a not-quite-the-truth name.

Both eyebrows went straight up, like he was surprised he'd even gotten so lucky. Maybe he wasn't as 'Casanova' as he let himself look. "Really?" Surprise reflected in his voice too. It was a pleasant timber. But there was a sharp, glittering shine in his eyes that made Ianto look away, and busied himself with a quick sip to cover the burning of his face. "It's nice. Handsome; strong too."

That might've spelt trouble. Ianto straightened his shoulders and slid his glass slightly down the bar, away from his company. There would be no room for date rape drugs here, if that was the scheme. "What's yours?" It was also only fair to be polite.

"John Hart. Well," he said, far too quickly. "Jack, really."

Ianto raised an eyebrow, but didn't push. He filed 'John Hart' away, only taking a second to wonder if that was a pseudonym: it seemed dismissed too readily, almost suspiciously. "Tourist?"

'Jack' shrugged. "Couple days, yeah. Hardly a proper vacation."

_Business trip._ Ianto suppressed a frown and gave Jack a serious look over. There wasn't much to see past the greatcoat, save the slacks he wore. Nothing to indicate he was a businessman entirely. Casual business, perhaps, unless he'd changed before hitting the bars. Time to be blunt, because this was getting suspicious. "You better not think I'm some rent boy then."

Jack's laughter disrupted only a few patrons, including the bartender, who novelly leveled his best frown at the American. The rest were all screaming at the televised football match to be bothered with some errant background noise. Ianto took the time to down half of what was left of his drink, and blame any redness on intoxication.

But the American finally calmed down enough to breathe and shake his head vehemently, managing, "No...no, that's...sorry," before running into another small fit. Yet then he inhaled deep to stave off the impulse. The smile never left. "Not quite where I was heading with my night. Some people simply need a Stranger in a Bar for an hour or two, to get things off their chest. Free therapy, good for the soul." Jack tipped his glass Ianto's way, and Ianto got the very obvious impression he was being visually appraised, the way those eyes swept over him. "But take a compliment: you'd certainly be my first choice, if you were a rent boy."

Ianto downed the rest of his lager.

Jack chuckled blithely and Ianto ordered another with every indication of haste. But with the drink set in front of him, Ianto awkwardly realized these were only set motions to feel and look uncomfortable. The 'compliment' was...well, out of the usual in the line-up of his life, but it didn't scare him, not really. So he took it as a _weird_ compliment and said, "You have a bit of the big bad wolf in you, you know."

The almost permanent smile slipped, a frozen falter. A split-second after it happens, it was replaced by another grin to make a wolf proud. "It's never been said like that, but, yeah, I had an inkling."

And that's where it was dropped.

The Stranger in the Bar set-up only worked if you had the balls to approach a drinking stranger to begin with. Jack made it look easy, going on about Bilis Manger's neighbor habits, his two secretaries' sore love lives, because Toshiko kept losing boyfriends and Gwen was cheating on his boyfriend Rhys with one Dr. Harper, how Martha Jones always managed to make him run his toes off whenever she was in his vicinity, and how Yvonne Hartman's legs got longer every time he met with her to talk contracts and gee, how cold she was to any advances.

In response, Ianto made small talk about the people at his job, retelling the story of Mary's birthday bash and working backwards from there, and tried to stretch every story to its thinnest, so he didn't have to mention his five year memory blank. No point, didn't want random strangers knowing, might sound like a lie, might be used against him. Ianto kept his mouth shut tight.

Jack talked a lot, and it was a few hours later when he seemed to be out of things to say. Ianto was sorely missing it when it seemed to be gone, while the ache of his jaw never felt so relieved to just stop smiling, where his lungs were recuperating from one laughing fit he never saw coming. It made him feel _good_, and only hit home more that this man was due out of the country tomorrow afternoon.

So Ianto gathered his balls and made the pitch he never would have considered at all before night: "Want to get out of here?"

The way Jack's head snapped to _look_ at him sent a flag up in his mind and a shiver down his spine. Ianto never imagined it was possible to look so utterly interested and utterly pained simultaneously, but there it was, plain as day. And finally: he grimaced.

"A couple of months ago, I would have," he said, voice thickening. "But I owe my girl Suzie and promised I wouldn't cheat anymore. A little honor and faith." The admission sweep icy relief across Ianto's chest, along with some disappointment, but Jack managed a shaky grin. "Otherwise we'd be out of here already. The invitation alone makes me happy though."

The 'could have' made Ianto smile back. But it was still late, and Ianto had work. "I need to be going then."

"Yeah." Except when Ianto slid out of his chair and rounded around Jack, the American grabbed him by the elbow and held him. And without care that this was the wrong type of bar to be doing it, Jack pulled him back to steal a kiss from his lips.

Ianto stiffened, expecting...maybe more, maybe much more, or maybe for the ground to swallow him alive. But it was chaste, and Jack let him go the same time he dropped his grasp. And he smiled like he meant it, but the light never reached his eyes. "See you in another lifetime, Ifan."

And that was it.

- o - 8 - o -

Gwen's face fell, and Tosh mirrored it. "Completely?"

"Completely," Jack confirmed, and it felt like oil sliding down his throat as he said it, sick to his gut and churning it like butter.

"Right then." Owen stood up from his chair and braced himself on the table, looking to each other occupant as he spoke. "Can we get back to our actual jobs now that we're sure he's not going to relapse like Gwen did?"

The following silence was only broken a span later, by Jack's ever stern, last-call tone. "Are we absolutely convinced that nothing in his actions hinted at him remembering?"

Owen was outright appalled. "Christ! What do you want us to do, Jack, what more do you want us to do?! Ask him to make us a cuppa? Give him a stopwatch or a gizmo to name? Put a cleaver to his throat? Nearly blow him up with the singularity scalpel or make him attend a wedding from alien hell? Gonna shag him a bit?!"

Jack was many things, but entirely mature wasn't one of them. The hand-in-the-cookie-jar look fell over his features, and Owen threw his hands up in the air and stormed out of the boardroom. "You didn't! Bastard bloody well didn't!"

"...I didn't, for the record," he said at the mesmerized horror of Tosh and Gwen. "Could've. Didn't."

Tosh shook her head. "If everything you threw at him didn't awaken something, I suppose it's for the better. What are the chances he'll run into an alien that jogs his memory anyway?" But it was obvious she didn't agree with her own sentiment. Not lifting her eyes, she collected her things and followed Owen's angry wake with less rippling or the water. Leaving Jack and Gwen behind.

Gwen didn't want to be the first one to move, and Jack looked like he wouldn't be, caught in his own thoughts. Before the silence grew too terse, she asked, "Is that all there is?"

Jack nodded, no hesitation or reluctance. "We all make mistakes and misjudge people." A beat, and he forced himself to stand, with much regret and resolve in his movements. "We all have our thresholds, and he simply hit his." _Far sooner than he should have_ went unsaid, and Jack headed off for his office with his hands in his pockets. He had to call Glasgow, a task held off for far too long.

They were going to need a replacement.


End file.
